


Sixteen Again

by Duck_Life



Category: X-Men (Comicverse)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Divorce, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-19
Updated: 2015-03-19
Packaged: 2018-03-18 15:26:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,613
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3574591
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Duck_Life/pseuds/Duck_Life
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jean lives (the most recent time). Scott's not the only love of her life.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Sixteen Again

His feet dangling inches above the water of the lake, Warren glances up to see Jean approaching the dock where he sits. Without a word, she drops down beside him and offers up one of the two root beer bottles in her hands. For a minute, they sit there in silence, until it occurs to him that he can’t open the soda without a bottle opener.

But Jean’s prepared. The cap on his bottle flares pink for a moment, then rips off and drops into the lake below them. “Shoot,” she says under her breath. “I hate littering.” Any other day, Warren might laugh. All he can manage now is a weak smile. Telekinetically taking off her own bottle cap more carefully, she catches it in her hand and drops it between them on the dock. “Please laugh,” she adds, more serious now. “Please make fun of me. I don’t… I don’t want things to be awkward between us, Warren, you know I don’t.”

“I, uh,” he says, and takes a swig of root beer to put off saying words. “Well, neither do I, Jeannie. But if things are _gonna_ be awkward, then there’s no point in _lying_ about it.”

“I’m so sorry.”

“Hey, come on.” Shuffling his wings awkwardly, he tries to turn and meet her eyes. “It wasn’t gonna work out. That’s not anyone’s _fault_. And Scott’s a good- Scott is my- Scott is fine.”

“He thinks you hate him.”

Warren lets out a long sigh. “I don’t. I can’t. I- I’m fine.”

“Oh you are _not_ ‘fine.’”

“I said I’m fine. So I’m fine.”

“Warr- come _on._ Your feathers are _literally_ ruffled.”

“Can we just…” He starts, stops, takes another sip of his root beer. “Look, what d’you want from me, Jeannie? Can you just- just tell me that, in plain terms, and then I can just… _be_ that, okay? Just say, like, ‘Hey, Warren, I want you to act like everything’s chill,’ or ‘Hey, Warren, I want you to be honest about your feelings,’ or ‘Hey, Warren-’”

“I want you to be happy.”

She can’t look at him, just stares out at the lake for a long moment. The sun’s set while they’ve been sitting out here, and it’ll be completely dark by the time they get back to the mansion. “That might take some time,” he tells her. Honestly.

“I’ve got time,” she says after awhile. “And- and so do you. And you’re gonna meet some gorgeous woman who’s smart and amazing and _loves you_. I promise.”

“Neat,” he grins. “This woman- you know anything else about her? Like, what are we talking here- C cups?”

Jean blinks. “Just because I came out here to try to make you feel better doesn’t mean I’ll hesitate to throw you in the lake, Worthington.” He laughs. Tomorrow they might fight killer robots or have a run-in with Magneto. Tonight? All they need to deal with is a little teenage heartache.

* * *

 

Her hands she keeps clenched in the deep pockets of her robe, because if she lets them hang free she’ll either smack Warren upside the head or hug the guy, and Jean’s pretty sure that either might just drive him away again. “What are you doing here?”

She keeps her voice low, keeps her distance. Even so, she expects him to startle at her voice. Warren maintains his unnatural calm. “I do not know,” he says, craning his neck around to look at her. In the dim light coming off one of the futuristic stoves in the Ship’s kitchen, she almost can’t tell that his skin is blue. Almost. It’s only been weeks since the showdown with Apocalypse, but the worry gnawing at her seems decades old. “I was angry,” he goes on, “before I came here. I felt myself filled with… rage. I have never known…”

As soon as he set foot in the place, the alarm bells went off in her head, woke her up from a nightmare of blood and feathers. She knew immediately, reached out for his mind and found something cracked, distorted, but undeniably Warren. And now that she stands in front of him, she intends to keep him here, to keep him from leaving again.

Warren Worthington the Third. Angel. Archangel. Death. Whomever. He’s the textbook definition of “flight risk”.

“And are you still angry?” she says, asking the question with all the caution and precision one might use in cradling a broken-winged bird.

Very slowly, very carefully, Warren shakes his head. Jean finds herself missing the way his bangs used to swish across his forehead when he did that. “How do you feel now?”

He clenches a fist, unclenches it. “Confused. Afraid.”

“Afraid of what?”

Now he turns completely around, and it takes an effort for her to stay composed when she’s again faced with the things Apocalypse did to him, those awful metal wings, the bleakness in his eyes. It makes him almost unrecognizable.

“I will kill you,” he says. “I’ll kill every single one of you.”

And suddenly she’s not Jean Grey anymore but Marvel Girl, squaring her shoulders and pulling her hands out of her pocket because this might just come to a fight. She’s reconciling with herself, because maybe this isn’t her friend at all, just some terrible shadow. “You didn’t come here to make threats, Warren.”

“Not,” he says, “a threat.” All the tension in his body seems to bleed out through his feet; he slumps, looking defeated. “You asked what I’m afraid of. That’s it. I’m afraid I’ll kill you all.” For the first time since appearing in the Ship, his voice trembles just slightly, and he doesn’t seem as in control. He seems more like himself.

“Oh,” Jean says, letting out a long breath. “Oh. Warren.” And then she can’t keep her feet rooted so far away from him anymore, she marches forward and doesn’t stop until they’re less than a foot apart. Warren doesn’t even flinch. “Honey, don’t ever think that. Of course you won’t.”

“I…” he tries, conflicted, unsure. “Bobby-”

“Bobby’s fine,” she assures him, trying to hold back tears. “It was a trick; you never hurt him. I’m okay, the kids are okay. Hank and Scott are okay. You would _never_ hurt us.”

“But I- _you can’t know that_ ,” he says, pleading and frantic now. She can feel his panic, an ocean getting choppier and choppier. “I’ve changed, I’m different, I am not- who I was. What I was. What…” His shoulders heave, his chest feels heavy. Reaching out, she tries to calm him, holds his head between her hands like she can shut out every bad thing that could ever happen to him. His skin feels warmer than hers, and she recalls the way Warren’s temperature always did run a little hotter than normal. That, at least, hasn’t changed. “What am I?”

Looking up at him, she can swear he looks sixteen again. Some terrified kid, buried under smooth talk and bravado and designer overcoats. “You’re our guardian angel,” Jean promises him. “You won’t let anything hurt us. Especially not yourself.”

* * *

 

Their legs tangled together beneath his Egyptian cotton sheets, the two of them lay there letting their breaths even out as the dust motes in the air still. Jean’s hair is starkly dark red against Warren’s white 1200 thread count pillow case, and he absently fans it out until it looks like a flame.

“What are we doing?” she wonders aloud, and when he rolls to face her she almost gets a mouthful of feathers.

“Sorry,” he says, ducking his head as he sweeps the wings back behind his back. “Uh… Jeannie, if you really need to ask that, you might need to consult a wikiHow or something.”

“Shut up,” she says, but she’s smiling too much to really look annoyed. “I mean what are we _doing_? Jesus, I’m- I’m _married_. Actually for-real honest-to-god married to someone who’s not you.”

“I know, I was there,” Warren says, and she has to resist the urge to telekinetically smack him with a pillow. “Look, way I see it, Scott had something good- something _great_ \- and he gave it up for Emma Frost. He gave up on you and him. So… ‘what are we doing?’ I would have to say… we are… getting back at Scott.”

“Mm.” One of his feathers has fallen out; she twirls it between her fingers as she thinks. “But is that- is that really a good reason to be with someone? I’m. I just don’t think it _is_ , Warren.”

“Oh,” he says, slumping back against the pillows. “I- yeah. Alright. That’s fine. If you want, I could- can take you home. And I guess I’ll just come back here and get back at Scott all by myself.”

“That’s not what I _meant_.” She rolls closer to him, propping herself up on one elbow. “ _This_ is fantastic. _You’re_ fantastic. Stressing about how my life went so screwy and where the fuck I stand with Scott Summers is _awful_. That’s what I need to cut out of my life. Not you. Not this.”

“Seriously? You’re just… ending it with him? For good?”

“Oh my God, are you trying to push me _towards_ him?”

“ _No_ ,” he amends, ghosting a hand up her arm. “No. I just- I mean, we all thought you were _it_. The perfect couple. Annoyingly so, at times.”

“Yeah,” she sighs, resting her head against his chest. “I guess we just… evolved.”

* * *

 

“You’re quitting the X-men?”

Scott looks even more shocked than he is angry, as thrown as he is by her declaration. He keeps pacing around their bedroom like a contained stampede in spandex.

“Well, yeah, that too,” Jean says. “For a while. But more specifically I meant _I quit our marriage_.”

Three floors down and seven rooms to the left, Glob Herman shouts “FUCKING OWNED” over his Xbox Live connection. In Scott and Jean’s room, they can hear it loud and clear.

“What?”

“Are you kidding? Did you not see this coming?” Jean’s hair hangs frayed and frizzled around her face. On the floor, her suitcase flies open and clothes begin piling themselves inside it, zipping out from the closet and the dresser drawers haphazardly. “I quit you, I quit us, I _quit_. I talked to a lawyer. If we work fast and really put our heads together, we can be divorced by Christmas. Halle-frickin’-lujah.”

“Jean, can we at least _talk_ about this?”

“You had _months_ to ‘talk about this,’” she retorts. Her photographs swoop into a cardboard box like they’re being controlled by some poltergeist. “We could’ve talked about Emma. We could’ve talked about En Sabah Fucking Nur. You made your choice, and this is mine.”

So Scott just stands there, looking perturbed but perhaps less perturbed than he should, that calm exterior only pissing Jean off more. Soon enough she’s packed and ready to leave, while at the same time being terrified of what will happen if she doesn’t stay. Scott’s been her home as much as the mansion, ever since she was sixteen years old.

What now?

He follows her all the way to the front doors like he won’t believe she’s really leaving until he sees it with his own eyes. “This is your decision. And I- I’ll respect it as long as you respect mine.”

She opens her mouth to spit something back at him, but thinks better of it. No need to burn bridges any more than she already has. And no need to give him any more reason to sit at a bar some day and rag on his bitch of an ex-wife. Her luggage floats along behind her, and it occurs to her that if no other good came out of this confrontation, at least Scott didn’t try to blame her attitude on the damn Phoenix.

“I just hope this makes you happy, Jean,” he says right as she’s making her way down the steps.

And if she were in a better state of mind, if she were in a more forgiving mood, she might tell him the same. She might tell him to move on. Be happy. _Live_ , Scott.

“Go fuck yourself, Scott.”

* * *

 

The place is fancy and the dinner is expensive. “Sure I’m not gonna embarrass you?” Jean says, glancing at Warren over the top of her menu. “What if I don’t know which fork to use?”

“Use any fork you like,” he tells her, winking. “I won’t mind.”

It’s been almost two months since the big showdown with Scott, and when she told Warren she felt up to a for-real, honest-to-god outside-amongst-others _date_ , she hadn’t quite expected… all this. He arrived in a brand new sports car and whisked her off to some restaurant the name of which (and of more than half the entrees) she couldn’t even pronounce.

“This is so bizarre,” she notes, looking around at the high ceiling and guests dressed to the nines. “God, I feel like I’m sixteen again.”

“God, I hope not,” he says, eliciting a laugh from Jean. “Now when you say bizarre… you mean the good kind of bizarre, right?”

Looking across the table, Jean smiles enough to crinkle the corners of her eyes. “The best kind.”

* * *

 

Jean loses her powers after M-Day, has them wiped from her almost as if they never existed. It’s like losing her balance, stumbling around without the awareness, without the senses she’s become accustomed to. Warren takes her flying, holds her close late at night and whispers to her the day’s events, how he feels, that he thinks she’s beautiful. Sharing his thoughts with her.

For two weeks straight, he wakes every morning to find her crying quietly as she tries as hard as she can to lift the throw pillow at the foot of the bed with her mind.

* * *

 

They’re on the roof, because she needs air and he needs to feel the wind in his wings. She kisses him, tilting her face up to his with one hand on the back of his neck, simple and soft. “Jean Grey,” he sighs, like he almost can’t believe it. Like he might be dreaming, and he’s waiting to be rudely awoken. “I’m in love with you.”

The night chill brushes past them and she curls closer to Warren. “I love you, too,” she says, and none of this is what she expected. He isn’t the man she was destined to marry, she isn’t the person she was destined to be, and this isn’t the life she was destined to lead.

In short, it’s perfect.

* * *

 

But of course, Jean knows better. Jean has learned some things in all her time battling and bartering and bickering just to _survive_ , and one is that everything comes back. And so her powers come back.

And so Archangel comes back.

“Come on, Warren,” she pleads with the blue-faced stranger in front of her, “it’s me.” Her mind is racing, putting together the facts. Logan should be pulling himself together by now, but then he’s got Betsy/Death to deal with. She’s lost track of Fantomex, he could be dead or alive right now. “You don’t have to do this. You don’t have to _be_ this.”

And what are the odds, then, that the two great loves of her life would both get their turn at becoming Apocalypse? “Angel is gone,” he tells her coldly, cruelly, with dead eyes. “This body is mine now, as is this world.”

Jean just plods on ahead. “I know you’re in there, Warren,” she says, staring at him across this divide. “And I love you. I love you so goddamned much, Warren. Fight him for _that_. For me. _Fight him_ , dammit.” And she can’t just pull them apart, not like she did with Scott once upon a time. This is no merger, this is a hostile takeover. Apocalypse _is_ every part of Warren, has taken him over body and soul. Still she tries. “You can stop all of this. I believe in you. Just take control. You can do it, Angel. I know you can. Just take control. Stop him, and take control.” She swallows, blinks away tears. “Listen to my voice. I love you. I love you I love you I love you come back to me.”

“What is this ridiculous speech?” Apocalypse sneers. “A last plea? A cry into the darkness? Some final attempt to save your lover’s soul?”

Jean, with her voice low, answers him. “A distraction.”

And the life seed she’s been levitating behind him, positioning, goes flying forward and spears Apocalypse through the heart.

The effect is instantaneous. He falls to his knees, a too-human cry escaping his mouth, and all of Jean’s resolve crumbles. Rushing forward, she kneels and props Warren back against her lap. His eyes are wide and human, his breaths shallow and sharp. “I’m here,” she tells him, speaking sincerely now. The tears are sincere, too. “I’m here, I’m here, it’s okay.”

His mouth works for a moment, trying to talk, and then- “It was you.”

“What?”

“The woman,” he rasps, looking up at her. “You told me… you once told me that I… was gonna meet some smart, gorgeous woman… who… it was you, Jeannie.”

Blood bubbles out the side of his mouth. He reaches up towards her face, as if he might wipe away a tear.

It’s the last thing he ever does for her.

* * *

 

They bury him with the rest of his family, some ancient cemetery out in the country, and Jean’s proud of herself for holding it together as long as anyone can see her. She hugs Betsy, she squeezes Bobby’s hand, she rests a palm on Hank’s shoulder. While she’s giving the eulogy, she glances over and catches Logan’s eye. He nods at her. Ororo asks her how she’s doing, and she tightens her jaw and straightens her shoulders and says she’s doing fine, just fine.

Scott finds her out under a small grouping of trees, shedding the few tears she’ll allow herself today. It’s funny, to think how much she used to cry, how comparatively little she does now. A lot about what used to be and what is is funny to her. Scott finds her and puts an arm on her shoulder, and without even thinking she’s turning into his chest and clinging to him like a life raft, hanging on until the shaking in her body subsides.

“I’m sorry,” she coughs into his shoulder.

“He was your- You loved him,” Scott murmurs into her ear.  “ _I’m_ sorry.”

“I meant- about before. About everything,” she says, and it’s been _years_ since they’ve really spoken. “I’m sorry about everything.”

She can feel his glasses brush against the side of her head. “You have nothing to be sorry for, Jean.” He backs away until they’re just staring at each other. Friends. Teammates. Spouses. Strangers. “Days like these… damn. I just- I’m glad this one’s better than the last one.”

Warren’s _last_ funeral, after the plane crash, after losing his wings. The media, the graffiti on the walls of the church. “I miss that time,” Jean admits. “Everything was so goddamn _solvable._ And nobody ever _really_ died. I miss being twenty-six and knowing what I wanted and knowing how I was gonna get it.”

They stand there under the trees for a long time in silence, letting all the harsh words over the years dissipate and disappear. Warren didn’t die hating Scott. No matter how much Scott might think otherwise, Jean knows the truth. Warren didn’t die hating Scott. So Jean doesn’t need to live that way.

* * *

 

After the funeral, Jean rejoins the X-men, but never chooses sides in the great Wolverine-Cyclops debacle. She bounces from the school to the island, catching up with Hank and Bobby one day, grappling to get along with Emma the next. It’s strange, and sad sometimes, but it’s her life. She’s learning to live with it.

When the Phoenix begins to make noise, the fingers point towards Hope Summers rather than herself, and she’s just fine with that. In all the fighting, she takes Hope’s side, ignoring all other angles. Whatever Hope wants.

It isn’t until the Phoenix takes on her select group of X-men, the Phoenix Five, that Jean takes a stance- against them. She remembers how it feels, that raging power, and all the evil that can come from it. She pleads with them, tries to reason, at one point tries climbing back into Scott’s head before the firebird forcibly shoves her out, almost as if to say, _You had your time_.

On the moon, in that once legendary fight against the Phoenix, years ago now, it was Colossus who was meant to kill her. That gentle Russian artist, tasked with this.

So it seems only fitting that it’s a Phoenix-powered Piotr who finally takes her down.

Things get screwy after that. Scott’s in prison, and then he’s not. The original five X-men are in the sixties—and then they’re not.

When Hank pulls his great time travel last-ditch effort to save the world, no one agrees with it at first. Even a long time after, no one agrees with it. All the usual fights and arguments break out. People bicker. Hank tries like hell to defend himself, even with both sides of their little war turn against him. Bobby and Kitty both call him out for being reckless, and eventually so does Scott. Logan comes marching into the library, staring wild-eyed at the kids crowded around on the couch.

“What the hell is this?” he demands, looking at them—Scott, Hank, Bobby… Jean and Warren, faces he hasn’t seen since they were buried.

Henry McCoy just smiles. “A second chance.”


End file.
